I TURNED THIS IN LATE

D.B AP2 2022

Introduction

You read the title right the first time, I promise. I turned this in late for a class called "A Nation's Argument," in which the unit for this action project covered the idea of contradiction, amendments, and rights. What rights do we have as human beings? What rights do we have in accordance to the government? We dived into post-civil war's antics on the subject, exploring how the amendments that came post-civil war (primarily the 13th amendment) were viewed, approached, and ultimately abused up to current times, which was further dived into thanks to a lecture by David Blight, and a look into how the system is run on a more local level thanks to Andre Vasquez, an alderman of Chicago. So when we look at the rule of law, a question came up. What is something we'd like to see changed in our own school? What rule would we like to amend? 

Below, I've structured an argument targeting the contradiction of a segment from GCE's social contract and explain how I would like to see it re-designed to be more fair and removed of its identified contradiction. As you may have guessed, I am going to be on the subject of the late work penalty. Without further ado, enjoy (and consider if you're staff) my argument. 

GETTING MAD

“If a student has not submitted their work on time, a 15% penalty will be applied to their grade for the assignment. Work submitted more than 72 hours after the assigned time will only be accepted at the instructor’s discretion and may be subject to further grade penalties.”

GCE's severity of this punishment is ridiculous. When it comes to action projects, missing the due date even by a insignificant amount leads to a whole letter grade being dropped immediately after the due date has been passed. A teacher could be generous and overlook the penalty if the time does not seem significant enough for the student to receive a punishment. This is not the case for this school. The moment that period of time has passed, a 15% penalty is applied to the student’s assignment which from my experience leaves no room for “bargaining” to have the teacher yield the right to apply the 15% penalty. 

Now, let's break this rule into a syllogism in order to identify the contradiction a little easier. This syllogism is taken and rearranged from the words of the rule itself to make this argument.

P1 - Work should be submitted by students in a timely manner in order to keep it relevant to the class.

P2 - Students that are struggling with work should request extensions from their teacher.

P3 - Students that do not submit work on time do not deserve full credit in comparison to those that have done it on time.

C - Therefore having a 15% penalty on late work should encourage students to turn in work in a timely manner and reach out to their teachers to avoid the punishment of late work.

Seems perfectly fine on paper, but not in action. This rule should not immediately apply to action projects. Addressing the primary concern, the 15% penalty on an action project is incredibly costly on a student’s final grade for the given class, as the highest possible score is always and only going to be 85 out of 100. This is if students actually make an action project worth 100 out of 100 in the first place, which in many case scenarios with a lot of teachers, is highly unlikely since there’s always something that a student is susceptible to missing or not meeting the teacher’s expectations.

This drops your grade even further for the project. A project worth 90 points out of 100 (which is what often students reasonably meet with ease) becomes 75 out of 100, dropping not only 1 letter grade, but two. A project that would be worth 85, is now 70 out of 100. One point away from being a failing action project for the student, despite making a worthwhile effort.

“Students should be comfortable emailing teachers for extensions, so a 15% penalty should never be a problem as long as you’re conveying this struggle straightforwardly.” 

Does this account for the student view on the subject of extension requests, or only the teacher/staff’s view on the subject of extension requests? Very often with my experiences as part of the student body, it has shown that the general impression of requesting an extension comes with the need of an excuse, otherwise it’s not an eligible request from the student to the teacher.

Without a given excuse, it feels impossible to negotiate this request with the teacher in the eyes of a student. This is further encouraged when the GCE Social Contract states: “In cases of student health or family emergency, the student is responsible to reschedule the assessment for the earliest reasonable opportunity.”

This penalty not only ignores the general take on requesting extensions from teachers by students, but going into the specifics of certain mindsets of students and teachers, it becomes a lot more complicated than just “request an extension, it’s so easy!” Sometimes students just use their time poorly. There’s nothing you can do about that. it’s inevitably always going to (and has) happen(end) with many students. We have people we’d like to spend time with outside of school, and sometimes those preferences don’t line up with the school’s deadlines. Rather than having to think up a sob story to tell our teachers why we can’t finish our work on time minutes before the deadline, it shouldn’t feel like life or death for your grade when you’ve misused your time outside of school.

In my experience, particularly with one of the teachers here, she created an interesting usage of the 72 hour period where each passing day after the due date of said homework/project increases the penalty on the assignment by 5%. You start on the first day with a 5%, second with 10%, and the third with 15%. After which is entirely left up to the teacher on whether or not you get points, since the 72 hour period is up. This highly encourages students to get things done sooner rather than later, as it currently stands its contradiction comes from the work ethic of GCE. 

GCE teachers value relevancy of material in class. Homework turned in sooner is more relevant than that which is encouraged to be turned in later. Which is exactly what the current rule discourages. That 15% penalty applies no matter what day you turn it in, as long as it is in that three day period. Wouldn't it be better to create an initiative in a student to turn it in sooner rather than later? That's where my redesign of this rule comes into play. Below is my composed syllogism:

P1: Work should be submitted by students in a 72 hour period after the due date in order to keep it relevant to the class.

P2: A penalty of 5% should be imposed on late work in order to dissuade students from turning in work late, but not discouraged entirely.

C: Therefore late work should have a penalty that rewards timeliness of said work, and punishes lack thereof by increasing said penalty by 5% per day passed to discourage further lateness of work.

Placing this argument into the form of an analogy, it's like when you're ordering food from a restaurant and they're running a little late. You'd rather have your meal sooner than later. You don't tell the waiter you're just not gonna give them a tip for the inconvenience, because now they have a reason not to bring your food sooner than later.

This social contract rule is not only unjust in its practice and contradictory of itself, but it violates my right to privacy. Looking at the constitution, I quote:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

As stated before, I shouldn't have to feel inclined to explain my life situation to a teacher every time I want an extension to avoid the late work penalty, yet it feels like this invasion of my privacy is necessary in order to achieve this. There hasn't been many case scenarios where I've simply just asked for an extension on my work without needing a reason for it, despite teachers previously attempting to persuade me into thinking that's so, it has not been that utopia so far.

In exploring the idea of true citizenship, I believe that this new rule would embrace and encourage the work ethics of not only the school, but the nation. Late is always better than never.

Finishing this off with looking into what another student of GCE has to say. After interviewing other students, one quote best advocated for my argument:

"There's been, like, many times where I feel I wasn't really rewarded for the work that I actually put in. And it upset me. Like just that small amount of time cost me something I could've been, I guess proud of."

- KH

Backed by supporters, this amendment is officially signed by:

DB, AG, CH, KH, and TEN.

SOURCES:

- SH (TEACHER OF GCE)

- STUDENT EXPERIENCE

- MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

"BETTER LATE THAN NEVER" ANALOGY
PICTURE BY ROK STRITOF/EYEEM/GETTY IMAGES